154 HUNTING WITH DOGS. 



a yard of open, and I snapped at him as one would 

 at a bolting rabbit ; but I shall never forgive my- 

 self for missing his enormous broadside for all 

 that. Far through the crashing forest I heard 

 him, with the dogs at his heels, for almost ten 

 minutes after I had missed him ; but I never saw 

 him again. 



I had heard frequently previous to this of the 

 immense size of these Caucasian boars when old and 

 lonely, and have myself since seen the specimen in 

 the Tiflis Museum killed by the Grand Duke or one 

 of his friends at the Royal forest of Karias, which is 

 said to weigh twenty-one puds ; and as sixty-two 

 puds go to the ton, this would make him about 780 

 pounds. But in my own mind I feel convinced 

 that the boar that charged past me from his dark 

 fastness at the root of that old chestnut was half 

 as large again. Every angler knows that the fish 

 you miss is the heaviest that ever rose at your fly ; 

 of course I may have misjudged the dimensions 

 of my boar, and therefore ask no one to believe 

 in his immense size, though firmly believing in 

 it myself. 



That boars should grow to an enormous size 

 here, where they are never disturbed, and where 

 every variety of food to which they are peculiarly 

 partial is so abundant, is hardly to be wondered 

 at. The forests are full of all sorts of fruit, of 

 which bears and boars alone have the gathering ; 



